Left, Right, Left, Right ...

Someone remarked recently, after the French regional elections, that 'populism' in Europe was marching in two directions. In France--but also in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, prosperous northern countries with a strong social democratic or socialist tradition--a combination of economic insecurity, Islamist violence, cultural diversity, and who knows what is nurturing right-wing xenophobic parties which increasingly dominate the political landscape in those countries. Not to mention Poland, Hungary, and other poor relations where this same tendency is even more advanced.

On the other hand, this observer noted, the voters in countries along the Mediterranean rim--Portugal, Spain, and Greece in particular--have recently put left-wing 'populists' into power, or at least advanced their fortunes. Thus Syriza in Greece, the Left Bloc, which just entered Portugal's new coalition government, and Podemos in Spain, which may also find itself part of a governing coalition: all are parties from the radical or non-traditional left, all 'populist' in the sense of insurgent, not wedded to a status quo of NATO, ECB capitalism, middle-of-the-road power-sharing. And all suddenly promoted to the first rank of their countries' politics.

The implication is that voter dissatisfaction with conventional politicians is reaching historic levels all over Europe--and in the US as well with the likes of Trump, Carson, and perhaps Sanders--but is bifurcated into Left and Right versions. Of course the notion that Left and Right populists are similar in that they are not in the center is a thoroughly specious premise, and I would be hard pressed to find any commonality at all between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. But the interesting point the observer made is that Greece, Portugal, and Spain are countries that, unlike their northern EU cousins, all experienced Fascist dictatorships within memory. The suggestion is that this experience inoculates them, perhaps, against a Marine LePen or a Gert Wilders. The putative populist insurgency therefore veers left in those countries, while its more natural direction is to the right. That at least is the hypothesis, and worth considering.

Does populist anger in America default to the right as well? Is it possible that a Sanders can gather up all that dissatisfaction and direct it where it belongs, in opposition to the 1% or the .1%? Or does our own tradition of militarization without fascism lend support to the belligerent xenophobes of the Republican party, but not to the quiet diplomacy of an Obama--or the anti-militarist leanings of Sanders? The word 'populism' has a very different force on either side of the Atlantic, and our political traditions are very different. Nonetheless it will be interesting to see if the left populisms of Greece, Portugal, and Spain can withstand the pressures of global capital--not so promising in the case of Greece--and carve out a new form of socialist dissent from the current hegemony. And more interesting still to see if Sanders can induce the US voters to follow suit.